A guide to Harry Hole » CRIME FICTION LOVER Crime Fiction Lover Features A guide to Harry Hole A guide to Harry Hole March 9, 2013 Permalink In some ways, the appeal of the Harry Hole stories is easy to pin down. Like so many modern detectives he’s got a few flaws. For a start, he’s a recovering alcoholic who often grabs a bottle when things get tough. Drunk or sober, he’s disorganised, and isn’t a particularly reliable boyfriend. But he displays many qualities too and never wants to let friends or colleagues down. He’s also an extremely determined detective who won’t let go and won’t stop until he gets his man. If it means sacrificing his job, or any hope of a stable personal life, so be it. Harry Hole detests corruption, and he’s no fan of inequality either. Tall, lanky and with light blue eyes, readers have come to recognise his haphazard approach which often leaves him worn down, at his wit’s end, and in need of a bath. Yet behind that there’s a remarkable ability to multi-task as he negotiates the various players, leads, and far-flung locations in a case.

Sometimes he juggles various aspects of a case alongside a love interest, and his personal and professional lives are mangled together. In the early books, he’s protected by his friend and superior in the Oslo police, Bjarne Møller, despite his madcap investigative style. But later on he comes into a lot of conflict with his boss. Maybe the best thing about reading Harry Hole is Jo Nesbo’s writing (pictured right). At his most fluent, the narrative takes on a dreamlike quality as Hole rushes through the investigation blurring fact and feeling. It becomes like a stream of consciousness and Hole seems to glide through life, while at the same time catching all of its sharp edges. He may or may not feel the pain, but eventually he comes up with the information required to solve a case. Nesbo plays with interesting aspects of history – Norway’s, Australia’s, Yugoslavia’s, even that of the gypsies – to give his stories greater depth and plenty of texture. However, he’s also a master of structured plotting and loves to engineer detailed set-pieces. There’s a theatre scene in The Bat that will have you holding your head in wonder, as someone in the story loses theirs.

And, the concluding chapters of The Devil’s Star, Redeemer and Phantom will leave you stunned. Nesbo isn’t the rising star of Scandinavian crime fiction any longer: he has the leading role! Because the series has been released in a fractured sequence in English, and because a great many readers now believe that Harry Hole is dead, we decided to put together a guide to the character and the books he appears in. We hope you enjoy it – do add your own comments below. The Bat The series starts in the most un-Nordic location possible as Harry Hole lands in Sydney, Australia. He’s there at the request of the Australian police, who are investigating the murder of Norwegian TV presenter Inger Holter. Her body, beaten and raped, has been recovered from the sea beneath a cliff. They don’t really want Hole’s help. His presence is merely to allay worries that Scandinavian tourism will dry up with the negative press. Working with Andrew Kensington, an Aboriginal member of the Sydney homicide team, Hole wades right in, making friends and enemies in the Bohemian quarter of Sydney where Inger worked.

He and Kensington chase down some leads that take them into the Outback looking for a drug dealer, and we get a perspective on the Aboriginal experience. Perhaps because of its non-Norwegian setting, The Bat was only released in October 2012, after seven other Harry Hole thrillers had already appeared in English. Read our review here . Buy now on Amazon Cockroaches When we originally wrote this guide to Harry Hole, Cockroaches hadn’t been translated into English, but it eventually arrived in November 2012 and what you’re reading now is an update to this post. Hole has been drinking and trying to deal with what happened in Sydney, and he’s also angry about the rape of his sister, when his boss Bjarne Møller scrapes him off a barstool and puts him on the next plane to Bangkok. The Norwegian ambassador there has been murdered in compromising circumstances – they found him lying face down in a brothel with a knife in his back. Strangely, the old Buddhist dagger has reindeer oil on it. Partnered with an American cop who works for the Bangkok police, Liz Crumley, Harry Hole investigates both Norwegian expats and some very dangerous locals whom the ambassador owed money.

The novel works at a slightly more sedate and thoughtful pace than some of the others in the series, though the killer does eventually manage to drag Hole down into the dark depths. The ending’s frentic, angry and crazy. Cockroaches was originally published in Norway in 1998. Buy now on Amazon The Redbreast For English readers, The Redbreast is the second de facto Harry Hole novel. Appearing in 2006, it’s the first in Nesbo’s Oslo Trilogy, but came out a year after the third in the trilogy, The Devil’s Star. Confusing, huh? Well now you can buy all three books as a bundle on Amazon . The Redbreast opens with Hole on a routine stake-out during which he makes a split-second decision about a possible sniper – one which ends in disaster. So he’s ‘promoted’ to a quieter department, and becomes involved in a murder case which has roots 60 years earlier in World War II. The historical era of Norwegian-Nazi collaboration serves as both the backdrop for the killer’s motivations and the locus for the present investigation. Using frequent flashbacks, Nesbo deftly unravels past and present simultaneously.

This case involves old diaries, a sniper rifle, a few Neo-Nazis, and enough red herrings to leave you guessing til the end. Buy now on Amazon Nemesis Book two in the Oslo Trilogy takes place two years after The Redbreast and Hole is called to the scene of a bank robbery that’s gone south. The culprit has gunned down a bank teller in cold blood and all Hole has to go on is some grainy CCTV footage. Here Nesbo introduces Beate Lønn, a shy but brilliant member of the Robbery Unit who has a rare genetic condition: she never forgets a face. While scrutinising the video alongside Harry, she slowly comes out of her shell. Harry’s new girlfriend Rakel is in Russia seeking custody of her son, and Hole gets a call from an old girlfriend. After a night-cap and night of passion, he can’t remember what happened or even how he got home. However, his old flame is found with a bullet through her head. As with other books in the series, he’s being played by a nemesis – maybe it’s Detective Waaler. Nesbo also brings in a gypsy character along with lots of background on Romany gypsies.

Buy now on Amazon The Devil’s Star Though it was the fifth Harry Hole book for Norwegian readers, The Devil’s Star was the first one translated for the English-speaking world. It’s a good introduction to the character and to Nesbo’s well-paced, tightly structured style, not to mention his dark sense of humour and taste for the outrageous. Hole and his team are investigating an unusual murder – the victim is missing a finger and under the eyelid they find a tiny, star-shaped red diamond. As new victims begin to surface, each with the same calling card, but a different digit missing, Hole is forced to team up with Waaler, whom he suspects is guilty of a long list of crimes – murdering Hole’s partner, running covert arms, and far-reaching corruption. Hole is off the wagon, working in an alcohol-fueled daze and clinging to Rakel and her son Oleg, with whom he has formed a bond. Watch for the pulse-pounding finale – another fine set-piece from Nesbo. Buy now on Amazon The Redeemer This one first appeared in Norwegian in 2005, but was published in English in 2009.

Work has become a bit of a battlefield for Harry Hole with Bjarne Møller’s retirement at the end of the previous book – he doesn’t get along well with his new senior inspector. You’ll have noticed that Nesbo likes to have tendrils of his plotlines reaching into the past and The Redeemer begins with the rape of a teenage girl back in 1991, at a Salvation Army youth camp. She keeps quiet about it, not wanting to damage her father’s reputation as he’s high up in the organisation. Further flashbacks in the book take us to the break-up of Yugoslavia, with Serb militias going on a violent rampage in Vukovar. A Croat survivor of this, now a hitman, turns up in Oslo and kills a Salvation Army officer. Harry Hole, Jack Halvorsen and Beate Lønn must investigate the case. At this stage Rakel has left him and has a new boyfriend. Nesbo concludes the book with Harry Hole facing two killers and a moral conundrum. Buy now on Amazon The Snowman Creepier than ever before, this Harry Hole novel has quite a horror feel to it – the killer takes a woman and leaves behind a snowman.

A snowman with a hideous grin, the victim’s scarf around its neck, and pebble eyes that stare at her little boy who’s waiting for her inside the house. Another woman disappears and Harry Hole works alongside Katrine Bratt another detective who, like Harry Hole, has a complex past. The plot is complex too and sees them connecting other missing persons cases to the snowman murders, and an all-too-perfect television host who has interviewed Harry Hole becomes a chief suspect. When it comes down to it the killer is closer to Hole, and ex-girlfriend Rakel, than anyone at first realised and our hero finds himself in a race against time to save her. In one action scene, Hole loses the tip of one of his fingers. According to The Hollywood Reporter , Martin Scorcese is directing a film version of The Snowman. Buy now on Amazon The Leopard Harry Hole has been living in Hong Kong but returns to Norway at the request of Kaja Solness, a Crime Squad officer back in Oslo. It’s believed a serial killer is on the loose and when a female MP is killed, Hole teams up with the police to help solve the murder.

All three victims are connected by the same ski lodge and the police attempt to use another member as bait for the killer. It goes wrong, however, and the killer escapes to the Congo. Hole and Solness follow and face grave dangers in Africa where they are captured, and the action takes them to the very edge of a volcano. The book contains many personal reflections for Harry Hole. During the story his father passes away, he meets once again with The Snowman of the previous novel, and seems to affirm that Rakel is the one love of his life. Buy now on Amazon Phantom Translated into English in 2012, Phantom sees Harry Hole returning to Oslo after three years in Hong Kong. His aim is to try and exonerate Oleg, ex-flame Rakel’s son, a boy to whom Harry Hole has been a father figure on and off during the series. Now an unruly teenager, Oleg has been living in a squat and is accused of killing a junkie. As the case unfolds it looks like Hole can get Oleg off the hook, but the boy has been dealing drugs.

This brings Hole into contact with an organised, determined and innovative Russian outfit which is selling a powerful heroin substitute and seems to have influence within the police force. A sub-plot involves a drug-smuggling airline pilot. Every so often, Hole encounters an elderly man who drifts onto the scene and offers him help and advice – what does this strange phantom character know about Oleg? We’ve talked about Nesbo’s set-pieces before but Phantom’s ending really hits you like a brick in the face. It’s had many a reader typing ‘ is Harry Hole dead ?’ into Google. Read our review here . Buy now on Amazon Police When we first wrote this article, Police hadn’t been released yet, so this section has been updated. In this novel, you get to find out exactly what happened to Harry Hole after Phantom’s dramatic ending. It opens with a patient in hospital in a coma. He’s gradually recovering but we don’t know who he is. Meanwhile, Gunnar Hagen and his team of investigators are baffled by a series of murders that is taking place in Oslo. Someone is luring members of the force to the scenes of unsolved crimes, and then killing them in the same manner as the victim of the original crime.

Both the Crime Squad and new chief of police Mikael Bellman seem out of their depth – but if Hole joins the investigation perhaps there will be a breakthrough. This novel sees some real changes in Hole and his motivations, and also looks closely at the meaning of justice. When he eventually joins the hunt for the killer there are two questions. Firstly, how will they catch this brutal assassin? Second, how will diving into a gritty case affect both Hole and his relationships with Rakel and Oleg? You can read our review of Police here . The Thirst When we interviewed Jo Nesbo , he was ambivalent about whether or not there will be another Harry Hole novel after Police, but we had a sneaky suspicion that the Oslo detective would be back… and we were right because the 11th book in the series was announced in September 2016, with a launch date of 4 May 2017. In this book, another serial killer is working in the city and they’re targeting people using the online dating service, Tinder. The MO reminds Harry of a nemesis from his past, so there could be a score to settle as well for the unorthodox detective.

Thank-you to Jeremy Megraw for his help with this article. For more Norwegian crime fiction, see our guild to Karin Fossum’s Inspector Sejer series here . Home - Jo Nesbo Home The new Harry Hole thriller, coming May 2017 Harry Hole returns in the eleventh installment of the author’s best-selling, electrifying crime fiction series. UK Cover Reveal – THE THIRST Here’s a first look at the UK cover for Jo Nesbo’s new Harry Hole thriller, THE THIRST, which marks the return of the Oslo detective as he is drawn back into the police force when a serial killer begins targeting internet daters. THE THIRST will be available to buy worldwide in English on 20 April 2017 and you can pre-order your copy now More exciting news about THE THIRST will be revealed in the New Year with exclusive chapter previews, behind the scenes videos from Jo, competitions to win the book and lots more on Jo’s Facebook page . Watch this space! From The Hollywood Reporter: Big Number: 30 million books sold worldwide.

Harry Hole, the best-known creation of Norway’s most popular novelist, is getting a high-profile film debut, with Michael Fassbender playing the detective in October 2017’s The Snowman. If the movie is a hit, it could launch a franchise (Nesbo, 56, has 11 Harry Hole novels in the series). Also in development is The Son, a stand-alone novel, with Jake Gyllenhaal attached. And earlier this year, the Nesbo-created TV seriesOccupied, imagining if the Russians invaded Norway, debuted in that country (where it was the most expensive series in history) and on Netflix to strong reviews. Read more: Harry Hole - Book Series In Order Hardcover Paperback Kindle Pronounced (Hol-leh), Harry Hole is a fictional character and leading role in several novels written by Norwegian author, Jo Nesbo. On officer on the police force, Harry is depicted as a loose cannon. He is a heavy smoker and an alcoholic who lost his mother to cancer when he was in his early twenties. He also has a younger sister who has Down’s syndrome. He never really had a close relationship with his father.

He is not particularly favored by his superiors or his colleagues due to his alcoholism and short fuse, however, he is so good at what he does they feel he is too valuable of an asset to the force to let him go. The love of Harry’s life is a woman named Rakel; although, their relationship is consistently inconsistent as she is constantly walking in and out of his life due to his workaholic tendencies and alcoholism. She sees other men throughout the series but always ends up going back to Harry eventually. Her son, Oleg, looks up to Harry as a father figure, and they share a close bond throughout the novels. Often times throughout the series, Harry’s life comes together, but eventually falls apart again due to alcohol. The Bat The Bat, that was published in the year 1997,takes Harry to Sydney to observe the murder case of a young Norwegian woman, and local celebrity back home. Working alongside with a local detective he soon discovers that this was just the most recent in a series of murders stringing across the country, and the hunt is on for the mysterious psychopathic serial killer.

Although he was warned to not get too involved, Harry finds himself befriending a local detective and one of the witnesses and getting in way deeper than he is supposed to. He soon realizes that the lives of those investigating the case are at risk. The Cockroaches The second chapter of the novel, Harry Hole, The Cockroaches, was published in the year 1998. In this novel, the very drunk Harry is sent on a plane to Thailand to hush up the murder case of the Norwegian Ambassador in a Bangkok brothel. Along the way he discovers that the streets of Bangkok are a dangerous place full of secrets. The name comes from the expression, when you see one cockroach, there are most likely hundreds hiding within the walls.

Other Harry Hole Novels The Harry Hole series continues on in eight other novels including Rødstrupe, also known as The Redbreast, published in 2000 and in English in the year 2006; Sorgenfri, also known as Nemesis, published in the year 2002 and in English in the year 2008; Marekors, also known as The Devil’s Star published in the year 2003 and in English in the year 2005; Frelseren also known as The Redeemer published in the year 2005 and in English in the year 2009; Snømannen, also known as The Snowman published in the year 2007 and in English in the year 2010; Panserhjerte, also known as The Leopard published in the year 2009 and in English in the year 2011; Gjenferd, also known as Phantom published in the year 2011 and in English in the year 2012; and Politi, also known as Police in the year 2013.

Police was published in English in the year of 2013 as well. About the Author Jo Nesbo was born on March 29, 1960 in Oslo, Norway. Jo still currently lives in Oslo, close to his daughter and former wife. A Norwegian author, Jo is most well known for his Harry Hole novels. He finished college with a degree in Business Administration and Economics at the Norwegian-School of Economics. Prior to starting his novels, Jo was also a journalist working freelance and a stockbroker. Jo was also a very talented football player. He played for the Molde-FK until he was injured (tore the cruciate-ligaments in his knee) and had to retire from his athletic career. In addition to his novel writing, Jo is also a well known musician. He is the main song writer and vocalist for the Norwegian-rock band, Di Derre. Jo has written several other novels besides the novel Harry Hole series. This includes a series of children’s novels titled ” Doctor Proctor Novels”. The first of this series, titled Doctor-Proctor’s Fart-Powder, was published in 2007.

The series continued in 2008 with Doctor-Proctor’s Fart-Powder: Bubble in the Bathtub, in 2010 with Doctor-Proctor’s Fart-Powder: Who-Cut the-Cheese?, and in 2012 with Doctor Proctor’s Fart-Powder: The Great-Gold-Robbery. Along with his series novels, Jo has also written a few standalone novels as well. In the year 2001 he wrote, Karusellmusikk. In 2007 he wrote The White Hotel. In the year 2008 he wrote Headhunters which was adapted into film in 2011 starring Aksel Hennie, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Synnove Macody Lund, Julie Olgaard, and Eivind Sander. The highest-grossing Norwegian film of all time, Headhunters was nominated for several awards including four Amanda Awards, and a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Language film. Jo’s newest novel, Sonner is set to be published some time in 2014.

In the year 1999, Jo wrote a non-fiction piece titled Figures-in-the-Balkans. His novels are translated in over 40 different languages and over 9 million copies have been sold. Jo has received multiple awards and nominations for his works. He received the Riverton Prize in 1997 for Best-Norwegian Crime-Novel of the Year for The Bat. In the year 1998 he received the Glass-Key Award for Best-Nordic Crime-Novel of the Year for The Bat. The Redbreast received the Norwegian-Booksellers’ Prize for Best-Novel of the Year in 2000. Nemesis received the Mads-Wiel-Nygaards Bursary in the year 2002. The Redbreast received the Best-Norwegian Crime-Novel Ever-Written awarded by the Norwegian book-clubs in 2004. The Devil’s Star received the Finnish-Academy of Crime-Writers’ Special-Commendation in 2007 for Excellence-in-Foreign Crime Writing. The Redbreast was nominated for Duncan-Lawrie International Dagger in 2007.

The Snowman received the Norwegian-Booksellers’ Prize or Best-Novel of the Year in 2007. Doctor Proctor’s Fart-Powder was one of the finalists for Ark’s-Children’s-Book Award for Best-Children’s Book in 2007. The Snowman received the award of Best-Novel of the year from the Norwegian-Book-Club Prize in 2008. Doctor-Proctor’s Time Bathtub and Headhunters were both nominated-for the Norwegian Bookseller’s Prize in 2008. Nemesis was nominated-for the Edgar Award in 2010. Jo also received the award for the Norwegian-Peer Gynt Prize in 2013. Harry Hole Author Jo Nesbo on Ending His Series (Q&A) | Hollywood Reporter The best-selling Norwegian author reveals that he's "close" to a finale for the Oslo homicide detective: "I promise not to resurrect him after." This story first appeared in the Dec. 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Jo Nesbo, 52, is supplanting Stieg Larsson as the go-to Scandanivian crime writer with Phantom, his ninth novel about tortured Oslo homicide detective Harry Hole, plus an NBC TV series in the works and several films in development. In L.A. for the fall, the one-time pop star talked with THR about the book, working in Hollywood and what’s on his iPod. The Hollywood Reporter: Phantom finds Harry returning home from exile in Bangkok to free a dead girlfriend’s sonfrom jail. What’s new? Jo Nesbo: It’s not a procedural like the other books, where Harry is trying to find out the truth. In this case, he’s not interested in the truth, he’s just trying to get the son out of jail. PHOTOS: 11 Biggest Book-to-Big Screen Adaptations of the Last 25 Years THR: Are we near the end of the series? Nesbo: Close. It’s not going to be an ever-ending story. I promise not to resurrect him after. THR: You also write the kids’ series Doctor Proctor’s Fart Powder (being developed as a Norwegian movie). What inspired that?

Nesbo: My daughter would make me tell stories saying, “I want a girl, a real tiny boy, a dinosaur and a potato.” I skipped the dinosaur and the potato, but it had those two kids and a mad professor, who invented a powder that was so powerful that it would lift you from the ground, and the little boy would try to sell it to NASA to shoot astronauts in space without rockets. It’s about outsiders who are working together and hopefully will come out on top. STORY: 'Charlie St. Cloud' Director to Adapt Horror Novel 'Breed' for Summit THR: You just struck an American TV development deal (based on the forthcoming novel I Am Victor, with House’s Katie Jacobs producing for NBC/Universal). Are you a fan of American TV? Nesbo: I’ve been watching more American TV because of all the great TV series that have come out in the last five to 10 years. I’m a Sopranos fan, I’m a Wire fan, I’m a Mad Men fan. I’m a Deadwood fan. It makes me optimistic for the future of storytelling on TV that producers are willing to take that kind of jump. THR: Any interest in screenwriting?

Nesbo: A little. It’s a different craft from writing novels. You get spoiled as a novelist because you get to be the director and the editor, and you play all the parts, but as a screenwriter,you are a bit down the ladder. When they ask you to write draft 14 and you can tell they don’t want to use your great ideas, you do want to say, “F—off,” and write a novel instead. STORY: Post-Apocalyptic Novel 'Dog Stars' Picked Up by Constantin THR: You were once part of the hit Norwegian pop band Di Derre, so what’s on your iPod? Nesbo: Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I’m trying to explain to my rock friends that it’s one of the greatest albums of all time, and Jason and the Scorchers, part of the big college rock wave of the late ’80s. Order of Harry Hole Books - OrderOfBooks.com Home | Characters | Authors Order of Harry Hole Books Harry Hole is a character and series of crime fiction novels by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo . The protaganist and title character of the series is Harry Hole, a hardened detective who works the streets of Oslo.

In it, he sets to stop out murderers, bank robbers, gangsters and more. The Harry Hole series began in 1997 with The Bat, although the first to be released in English was The Redbreast. Below is a list of Jo Nesbo’s Harry Hole novels in publication and chronological order: Publication Order of Harry Hole Books The Bat Jo Nesbo - Book Series In Order Hardcover Paperback Kindle Jo Nesbo is a Norwegian police and at the same time a crime writer who was born is Oslo, Norway in the year 1960. He is also an accomplished musician as the primary singer and songwriter for the Norwegian rock band Di Derre. His crime novels, specifically the Harry Hole, series are is biggest claim to fame. His works have been translated into over forty (40) languages and have attained worldwide sales of over 9 million copies. Nesbo studied Economics and Business Administration at the Norwegian School of Economics and worked as a freelance journalist and stockbroker before his writing career took off. His talents as a writer are not solely based on the crime genre. He has also released a series of children’s books with the crazy Professor Proctor as the lead character.

These have been well received and some book critics have compared them to Roald Dahl’s work. The Harry Hole Series Harry Hole is the main character in Jo Nesbo’s series of ten crime novels. Harry is a police officer with the Oslo crime squad. HIs mother is deceased, he has a weak relationship with his father and his sister had Down Syndrome. He has very few close friends. Harry in a heavy smoker and is also an alcoholic, whose problems sometimes get him in trouble with his superiors. One of his only friends on the force, Bjarne Moller, the head of Hole’s department, often prevents his sacking because he understands Harry’s superior detective skills. The novels place Harry in many places in Oslo and give an unabashed view of the city, both good and bad. The Bat Series The bat serves as an introduction to the character of Harry Hole. Harry has the pleasure of being sent to Sydney in order to look into the murder of a young B-list Norwegian celebrity. Unlike future novels that are set primarily in Oslo the action takes place entirely in Australia. The novel introduces many of Harry’s flaws. You see his alcoholism first hand as well as get some insight into what his problem has caused in the past.

The novel is fast paced with a developed mystery that keeps the reader guessing until the culprit is revealed. Although this was the very first novel in the series it was not translated into English until later. The publishers believed that the stories set in Oslo would be a better bet. Only once these became hugely popular was Jo Nesbo’s very first novel translated. The Devil’s Star Series The Devil’s Star is the fifth in the Harry Hole series but it has the distinction of being the first of the Jo Nesbo series to have been translated into English. The story involves a young woman found dead in an Oslo flat with a finger from her left hand severed. Furthermore there is a a tiny diamond secreted in her eyelid in the shape of a pentagram. Harry must drag himself out of his alcoholic hole and use his detective skills to uncover the identity of the killer. This novel is interesting, not only because of the plot and characters but also by the use of the number 5. This being the fifth novel in the series Jo Nesbo expertly wove the number 5 into the story. For example, the number of days between murders is 5 and the victims were all murdered on the fifth floor. There are many more instances of the number being used.

It gives an exciting under layer to an already enthralling story. The Doctor Proctor Series It is rare that an author can develop a series with two memorable characters. This is even more impressive when one is an alcoholic crime novel police officer and the other an inventor in a series based for children. Doctor Proctor is an inventor waiting for his big break. He thinks he may have discovered it when he invents the most powerful fart powder known to man. Of course the powder cannot get into the wrong hands, which leads to a myriad of wildly imaginative adventures. As dark as Harry Hole can be this series is a laugh out loud joy to read. This shows Jo Nesbo’s talent as an artist. The genres are polar opposites yet both are done to an exceptional level of professionalism. Jo Nesbo Films Although the Harry Hole series has not been transferred to the big screen the release of the 2011 film Headhunters, based on the stand alone novel of the same name showed that Nesbo’s stories are screen worthy. Not only was this film well received but it was nominated for numerous awards outside of Norway. To date it is the highest grossing Norwegian film of all time.

It is also rumored that at least two novels have been written under the pen name of Tom Johansen. One of them, provisionally entitled Blood on Snow has reportedly been bought by Warner Brothers in the U.S. in order to make create a screenplay based on the novel. It is further rumored that big name actors like Leonardo DiCaprio are involved in the project. More about Jo Nesbo Jo Nesbo is truly a man of many talents. Having studied business, he left the mainstream and became a rock star. Once the music world was conquered as such, he turned his talent to writing and produced a series of best selling crime novels. Rather than keep to the same characters he wrote stand alone novels, one of which was made into a film and became an award winning blockbuster. That would be enough for most people to accomplish in a lifetime, but Jo Nesbo decided to challenge himself as a writer and created a series of children’s stories that astound with their imaginative story line and their humor. The future is bound to hold many interesting projects for Jo Nesbo. We can only wait with baited breath to see where his literary talent will lead us next, whether is be down a dark mysterious alley way or a laugh inducing fart filled adventure.

It will surely be ours to enjoy. Harry Hole series by Jo Nesbø Harry Hole series 11 works, 11 primary works Harry Hole is the main character in a series of, so far, ten crime novels written by Jo Nesbø. Hole is a classic loose cannon in the Oslo (Norway) police force, with few close friends and some unorthodox methods. Interview with Jo Nesbø (Author of The Snowman) February, 2014 Interview with Jo Nesbø Share on Twitter Officer Harry Hole, the brilliant alcoholic sleuth in Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø 's ten-novel series , is most affecting and darkly sympathetic when the author removes him from the happy streets of Oslo and dispatches him to more treacherous cities abroad. In The Bat —Nesbø's first novel and a New York Times best-seller—Hole tracks down the killer of a low-level celebrity in Sydney, Australia, giving readers their first enthralling glimpse of the detective—disoriented and untethered.

In Cockroaches , Nesbø's second novel in the series and the last to be translated into English, Hole is again sent overseas, landing this time in Bangkok to investigate the murder of a Norwegian ambassador whose body is discovered in a Patpong flophouse. Nesbø's relentless descriptors of Bangkok's deafening street life turn the city into the novel's next best character. For Hole, Bangkok is a reeking humid sump overwrought with corruption, sex crimes, pollution, and inexorable traffic. Nesbø, on the other hand, holds the entire country in the highest esteem. From Thailand he speaks with interviewer Mickey Stanley about rock climbing, Jim Thompson, and the accidental success of his first novel. Goodreads: What are you doing in Thailand? Jo Nesbø: I'm at a place called Railay. It's a peninsula—a national park where you have rock climbing. I go here every year with other climbers. It's a kind of boot camp...just climbing and writing. GR: So you are very familiar with the country? JN: Actually, the first time I was in Thailand, I spent several months in Bangkok, and only in Bangkok. I wasn't down here [in Railay].

It was just two years later that a friend of mine who plays in my band, who's a rock climber, said, "You should come down here and write." So I came down, and this is where I started rock climbing, but that was like 12 years ago. GR: You have said that Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles inspired you to set Cockroaches in Bangkok. The city acts as another planet for Harry. What was your agenda when you began research for the book in Bangkok? JN: For me, when I came to Bangkok, I wasn't really prepared. I had been traveling a lot, so I wouldn't say that I wasn't an experienced traveler, but I was still overwhelmed by Bangkok because of the heat and the pollution and the chaotic street life. I wasn't staying in the backpacker's area or the tourist part of the city or the posh part of the city. I was staying in a very typical part of Bangkok, down by the river. I was living with a friend, and it was really in the first two days that I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. My first reaction was, "I can't stay here.

I have to get out of here." But the city grows on you. You get used to it. I just fell in love with Bangkok. On one hand, I walk around there, and I'm on a mission, I'm at work, so I'm constantly looking for things I can use in the story. But on the other hand, at that time I didn't plan my novels in detail the way I do now, so I was open, you know. I enjoyed every aspect of Bangkok—the things I did use in the book and even the things I didn't use in the book. I just got an e-mail from the French restaurant that is in the Patpong area in Bangkok, and they realized they were in the book, and they were proud to be in it. GR: Do the Thai people read your novels? How do they or might they feel that their country is portrayed? JN: Some of my books have been translated into Thai. That was quite recently, so if those books are doing well, they will probably at some point translate Cockroaches also.

I love Thailand, and I love the Thai people, so I hope they won't get offended, because this would have been my first trip to Thailand, and I wrote the book the same way I wrote The Bat . It was from the point of view of a newcomer, somebody who is in Thailand for the first time. I found that was the best way to write it, since Harry is just arriving to this city and it's Mars—a totally strange place. So I think it was very effective and an easy way for me to write about Bangkok—to experience all these things for a first time. But of course it is not the book of a guy who's lived in the country for ten years who has the insight of someone who really knows Thailand. I probably know Thailand better now than I did then, but still I spent two months doing research. GR: Cockroaches is the last of the Harry Hole novels to be translated into English, but it's the second book in the series. Why is this novel bringing up the rear? JN: When we started selling the rights for the Harry Hole series, I was pretty convinced that the first two novels wouldn't be of much interest because they were about a Norwegian detective.

That was exotic enough to begin with, but then in the first novel, The Bat , Harry was in Sydney, and in the second [ Cockroaches ] he was in Bangkok—that was sort of too much. But since The Bat has done so well, they wanted to translate the second novel. I think if it hadn't been for the success of the rest of the series, it probably wouldn't have been translated. I think it was just that the whole series has gotten such a big following. GR: We would feel cheated if we Americans only got nine of the 10. JN: Yeah. It's a bit confusing now for American and English readers because everything has been translated out of order. It was the fifth book in the series, then the third book, then the fourth, then the seventh, and now the first and the second. So at least they're using the right name in the UK, where my publishing house is Random House. GR: Goodreads member Peggy asks, "What effect, if any, do you feel having your work translated to English has on your work? Do we lose something not having the native language?" JN: Yes, you do. It's inevitable. And I realized this.

I never read my translations nowadays because it's too frustrating. And I think that Don Bartlett, my translator, is doing a great job. I realize that the problems that he will run into, I couldn't have solved them any better myself. But things do get lost in translation. It's mostly the humor. There are certain things that have to do with humor in that language, choosing a word, stuff like that. But that's just the way it is with language. Everything can't be translated. GR: The immediate thing that popped into my head when I saw the name Harry in a detective novel was Harry Bosch from the Michael Connelly novels. Is he someone you like? JN: Definitely. I mean, there are so many good American crime writers like Michael, of course. Dennis Lehane , and you have James Ellroy , who is great. And all these are really good crime writers, but just like any other country you also have a lot of bad crime writers. And people are kind of surprised when I tell them that we have bad crime writers in Scandinavia, too. GR: You have said that you admire the work of Jim Thompson because he writes these very dark crime novels.

JN: Jim Thompson is probably the writer who inspired me to write the kind of mystery novels that I do. The way I see it, he wrote American Psycho 30 years before Bret Easton Ellis did. To me he was a pioneer in writing from a sociopath's point of view. Writing from that type of first-person point of view is courageous. And he pulled it off, even with the black humor in it; that's really impressive. GR: Did you know right away that you were going to write crime novels? Many mystery writers begin with aspirations of writing the next great novel, then they move to the more structured crime genre. JN: I didn't write a crime novel because I had an idea that it would be easier to sell, but like you said, the genre has a very defined form and structure. I had limited time in which to finish my novel. I had given myself five weeks to write the first draft. So I thought, OK, it will have to be a crime novel simply because I didn't have time for the big novel.

And I had seen many of my friends with ambitions of becoming writers: They would start on their big novel right away, and of course never finish it, so I decided, OK, let's write a crime novel. At least I know the head and the tail of a crime novel. That was the reason. I wasn't ever planning on having it published. I was going to use it to introduce myself to some of the publishing houses, then hopefully if they liked it they would say OK, we can't publish this, but send us whatever you're writing next. So I was a bit shocked when they found me and said that they wanted to publish the crime novel, but by then I had probably realized there was more to the crime novel than I had been availed. It's probably easier to be quick when you have boundaries. At least that's how it works for me. And also, there's something special with crime novels, it's a very intimate conversation with the reader because, when the reader opens a crime novel, they go into it with certain expectations.

That means that when they open to page one, the reader expects you to work as an illusionist, so they have to pay attention, and so there's almost an interactive reading where you are giving your reader clues. I like that game that you have with the reader—to really know what you're expected to do—to have to, on one hand, live up to those expectations, and to, on the other hand, want to surprise them. And I think that's quite challenging, and I like that. GR: That game between writer and reader has led to these books becoming incredible successes. JN: It's all about storytelling. I don't really see that a crime story necessarily has to be about murder. It's good if there's a murder...at least one murder. I don't see myself as writing about police work or solving murder cases, but I think it's a very effective vehicle for storytelling. GR: Goodreads member Martha writes, "I love every one of Jo Nesbø's books. I've always wanted to know how he keeps track of all the plot twists and ties up all the ends at the very moment he wants the reader to know what's going on and not a moment before.

I picture a huge wall plastered with yellow Post-it notes that he moves around almost like a board game!" JN: I write synopses. It's just a resume of the story, and I put everything in there. And other than that, I just have to keep it in my head. But when I'm working on the plot, I'm probably thinking about plot and the details of the story day and night, so I am constantly working on it. If I put it away for a couple of months, it's like I have to start all over again. GR: And now you've taken on Macbeth . Can you tell me anything about this upcoming project? JN: It's the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare, so Random House has invited a number of writers to write novels based on his plays. And I was, of course, very honored to be asked and to be able to write a novel based on Macbeth . It's also a bit scary, but not too scary when you think about it. I said in a press release that I wouldn't try to live up to Macbeth or to Shakespeare.

I'm not going to have a go at Shakespeare; I'm going to have a go at the story of Macbeth , the way it's been structured by Shakespeare. And it's a good story. GR: Goodreads member Marieldrucker writes, "Your Harry Hole novels are dark police procedurals. How easy is it for you to switch gears and write Harry Hole and then write books like the Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder series for children?" JN: Not that hard, really. I think I need to do both. I think that Dr. Proctor...those books are a great break from Harry. It's so different. It feels like, how can I put it: If writing a Harry Hole story is like directing a symphony orchestra, then writing Dr. Proctor is like going to a club and jamming with a band. I don't have to plan it that much in detail, but it's still just as challenging, only in a different way. It's more playful, but you have to be on top of the game.

GR: Goodreads member KatherineC asks, "Have you ever considered writing a historical novel?" JN: I have, if by historical novel you mean a story of fiction placed in another time with a backdrop of actual events, the answer is yes, I have considered it. I don't know when or if that novel will be written. GR: Have you started one? JN: Well, it's just an idea of a gun that's been produced early in the 20th century, and it's a beautiful gun that travels from owner to owner, and it's a sort of history of violence—of the United States and Europe in the 20th century. Interview by Mickey Stanley for Goodreads. Stanley is the assistant to Executive Literary Editor Wayne Lawson at Vanity Fair magazine. He has written about arts and culture for Men's Vogue, C Magazine, ArtWeek, and Vanity Fair. Jo Nesbø What is it about Scandinavian mysteries that makes them, on average, so much better than anyone else's? I'm not saying Americans can't write good thrillers: Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer series would come near the top of any aficionado's list, as would Patricia Highsmith's Ripley books.

But these deeply psychological, highly individualistic portraits of twisted motivation represent only a small sliver of what the genre can do. In the right hands, the mystery novel becomes not only a thrilling cat-and-mouse game between a fiendishly clever murderer and a doggedly persistent detective, but also a commentary on the wider society that spawns, polices, and punishes murder. It is this wider view—the social view—at which the Scandinavians excel. Perhaps we can attribute this in part to the small size of these far northern countries, their relatively homogenous populations, their stable cultural traditions—a setting, in short, in which murders (and especially serial murders) stand out starkly and beg for analysis. Or maybe this wider focus is connected to the firmly if mildly socialist perspective of even the most conservative Scandinavian governments, a view in which individual behavior contributes to or detracts from the public welfare. Possibly the dark, cold, long winters also have a role: With those extreme alternations between everlasting night and midnight sun, the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians may be more likely than the rest of us to reflect on the role of environment in shaping character.

The citizens of these countries also seem unusually alert to their own national pasts (unlike Americans, say, for whom the mid-twentieth-century is already History), and this in turn makes them more likely to seek cause and effect in these collective historical influences. In any event, what all these factors add up to is a worldview that places the criminal at the center of a social web. This is not necessarily what makes Scandinavian mysteries addictive—thatcan probably be attributed to the typical thriller qualities of suspense and surprise—but it is what makes them remarkably satisfying. Jo Nesbø's excellent books are the latest addition to this Nordic roster, which begins with the grandparents of all Scandinavian mysteries—the marvelous 10-volume Martin Beck series written by Per Wahlöö and Maj Sjöwall in the 1960s and 1970s—and descends through the estimable Henning Mankell, with his endearing Kurt Wallander figure, to the somewhat debased but still enjoyable level of Stieg Larsson. Nesbø differs from all these Swedes in that he is a Norwegian, so he's playing his games (particularly his historical games) with a slightly different set of pieces.

His moves, like those of his best predecessors, are subtle and complicated. His countermoves are even more so; and in order to keep up with the patterns of play, you really need to be able to keep the whole board in your mind at all times. This, in fact, may be why Nesbø has thus far failed to capture the huge American audience that has glommed onto Stieg Larsson's series. Nesbø asks you to know things about the world: about Norway's involvement in the Second World War, about the nature of rural-urban migration in Scandinavia, about Eastern European gun-running, about the hierarchy of the Salvation Army, about DNA tracing, drug side-effects, and other medical technicalities, about …well, the list goes on and on. Get Slate in your inbox. Advertisement You don't have to know these things before you start reading Nesbø's books. You can learn them from the novels themselves, if you are alert enough. The amount you are asked to absorb in any one volume, between the alternating strands of plot, the different perspectives of the various characters, and the welter of social, physical, and psychological information, is huge.

Yet the absorption of all this stuff is so rapid, so intense, and—yes—so irresistibly addictive that, for those of us who have submitted ourselves fully to the process, it feels as if we are mainlining Nesbø, taking him in through our blood and our brains simultaneously. This is reading as you experienced it in childhood, without any gap between eye and mind, but with the added pleasures that adult plots and adult characters can bring. Nesbø's detective, who occupies center-stage throughout the series, is an Oslo-based police officer named Harry Hole. Like all appealing detective figures, Harry has many flaws. He's an alcoholic with a tendency to surliness and even violence. He has trouble maintaining romantic relationships with women, though his closest friends and best partners tend to be female. He depends on the cooperation of others in the police force, but he is not a team player, and being his friend or colleague or even lover can be a dangerous proposition. He's smart, and he has taste (references to excellent old movies and good pieces of music pop up in his reveries at key moments), but more than anything else he relies on a powerful internal engine he can't control: his own intuition.

All this makes him nearly impossible for his superiors to work with, and as a result they often undermine him—sometimes understandably, sometimes with devious motives of their own. Like all great cop plots, the Harry Hole series depends on an expectation that the enemy will as likely come from within, and above, as he will from the world outside. This too, I suppose, is connected to that larger, broader perspective: the sense that the same institutional structures that shape the criminal world also shape (and mar) the world of the police. Capitalizing, no doubt, on the enormous success of Stieg Larsson, Knopf is now issuing The Snowman , which is actually the seventh book in the Harry Hole series. Since it is crucial to read the series in order (because each plot refers to and in some cases hinges on the one before it, and Harry's own life goes through transformations you will need to be a party to in order to understand the books fully), American readers will have some pleasurable background reading to do before they launch into this latest volume.

The first two volumes, alas, have not yet been translated into English, so you will just have to live with those obscure references to whatever Harry did wrong when he was working on a case in South Africa. Advertisement The earliest book available to us Anglophones is The Redbreast ; start there, and then move on to Nemesis and The Devil's Star . These three form a trilogy in which the immediate case at hand (a cluster of contemporary murders that hark back to World War II, a string of increasingly violent bank robberies, and a series of symbolically similar but seemingly unrelated killings of women) gets resolved by the end of each book, but a deeper, darker case continues through all three. In solving each plot, Harry benefits from the special skills of his sidekicks—a woman named Ellen who can mentally draw every necessary connection between three random clues, and another woman named Beate who can recognize every face she's every glimpsed—but these characters, despite their outlandish abilities, never seem hokey in any way, as the more bizarre achievements of Larsson's Lizbeth Salander sometimes do. Character is important and largely credible in the Nesbø books, and that is part of what makes them consistently appealing.

But it is their plots—brilliant conceived, carefully worked out, and complicatedly satisfying—that finally make them un-put-downable. After The Devil's Star comes The Redeemer , which intertwines a plot involving the Norwegian Salvation Army with a brief history of Balkan unrest. (A warning: You may have some trouble acquiring all these earlier books in America at this point; I had to alternate between remaindered hardcovers, imported British paperbacks, and Kindle editions in order to read the whole set.) And then at last we reach The Snowman, which is probably the most terrifying and certainly the most addictive book in the whole series. The novel's storyline involves a series of gruesome murders, each heralded by the figure of a snowman, in which the victims are all mothers of young children; even to hint at what kinds of mothers they are would be to give away too much of the plot. Harry eventually exposes the serial killer with the help, but also sometimes the hindrance, of a new female sidekick, a glamorous, mysterious police officer named Katrin Bratt—and meanwhile his own relationship with his ex-lover Rakel and her son Oleg unravels on the side.

Nesbø's talent for complex, propulsive plotting reaches its pinnacle in this volume: I actually had to get out of bed in the middle of the night to finish reading it, because thinking about its plot strands made me hopelessly insomniac. And yet The Snowman is also the volume in which the rot begins to set in. The baroque quality of its Grand Guignol ending signals—to me, at least—that Jo Nesbø is finally getting tired of Harry Hole. I would guess he has begun to find Harry more of a burden than a pleasure, and is starting to wish he could get rid of this financially rewarding, deeply disturbing alter-ego with whom he has somehow saddled himself. It is the same process all great mystery writers go through—Conan Doyle with Sherlock Holmes, Mankell with Kurt Wallander. The despairing author realizes he has invented a character who has grown larger than himself, an uncontrollable figure who clambers across the supine authorial body as he makes his way into the arms of the demanding public. And the writerly impulse at this point is always the same: to destroy the detective in order to make his return impossible.

Jo Nesbø has not yet reached this point, but he is getting there. In the book that comes after The Snowman, which is called The Leopard (due out from Knopf in 2013), he tries to kill off Harry three times, and the increasingly ludicrous violence makes the plot seem like something made for TV. If I can recognize the symptoms of decline, then so must Jo Nesbø. It is only a matter of time before the Harry Hole series will come to a grinding halt. So start reading now, before it's too late.

Question: Who wrote the "Harry Hole" novels?
Answer: Jo Nesbo